A variety of tasks may be performed in a rail yard on one or more rail vehicle systems within the yard. For example, between missions performed by a rail vehicle, various systems, such as braking systems, of the units of a rail vehicle may be inspected and/or tested. In a rail yard, there may be a large number of rail cars in a relatively confined area, resulting in a large number of inspection and/or maintenance tasks. Difficult, dangerous, and/or mundane or repetitive tasks may be performed by robots.
However, there may still be tasks that are inappropriate for performance by a robot, resulting in humans being in the rail yard while the robots are performing tasks. Further, humans may be in the rail yard to oversee the robots or for other purposes, resulting in the potential for inadvertent, inconvenient, and/or dangerous incidents or contact between robots and humans, for example if a human is disposed on a path about to be traversed by a robot.